


She Waits In Avalon

by HicSuntDracones



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: (in this context that just means I hate canon), Anger, Avalon - Freeform, F/F, Feminist Themes, Fuck Canon, Gen, Inspired by The Mists of Avalon, LET THE HEALING BEGIN, Morgana went through some shit, POV Morgana (Merlin), Post-Canon, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Recovery, Unreliable Narrator, catharisis, here's the beginning of her dealing with it, introspective, reflective, seriously, vaguely inspired by
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:27:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23460958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HicSuntDracones/pseuds/HicSuntDracones
Summary: "......She did not know how she knew that this place was Avalon. She just knew. The same way she knows her name is Morgana or that Gwen’s eyes are brown. This is Avalon, and the wild magic sings quietly as it settles into her bones. Home at last."Morgana died. This is what happened after.
Relationships: Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), if you squint
Comments: 10
Kudos: 26





	She Waits In Avalon

She wakes in Avalon. She must be dead or something like it, for there is no pain. None at all. For the first time in many years, perhaps for the first time in her life, there is no pain. No tormenting visions, no magic suppressed under her skin, no voice aching from stifling and disuse. No control imposed or wounds inflicted. No rage. Just peace. There is only peace as she stares out onto the misty waters of Avalon.

She did not know how she knew that this place was Avalon. She just knew. The same way she knows her name is Morgana or that Gwen’s eyes are brown. This is Avalon, and the wild magic sings quietly as it settles into her bones. Home at last.

It was over. Finally. No more fighting and arguing and unfairness. No more murder or poison or battles. No hurtful spells or hate. Just her on this island. The isle of Avalon. The misty waters of Avalon. Her thoughts are going in circles, aren’t they? She supposes this is what happens when it is just her and the island. There is no fear to be found on the isle of Avalon. 

This isn’t right. She has not felt this peaceful once in her entire life. She has never felt this...calm before. How long has she been staring at the lake? The waters? The misty waters of Avalon.

She is in Avalon. She must be dead or something like it, for nothing hurts as she stares out at Avalon’s calm, peaceful waters. How odd that nothing hurts. Shouldn’t something be hurting? Being stabbed with a sword was meant to hurt, especially when it was an old friend doing the stabbing….

SHE’D BEEN STABBED. The pure fury Morgana feels at this realization is enough to regain her lake-stolen senses, at least for the moment. She rises, face red with anger and curses on her lips. She is sitting in a rocky cove, natural walls of pale rock rising around her on three sides. What she can see of the island beyond the small cliffs is dry and scrubby, but rain must have fallen recently, for everything is damp. The walls of the cove prevent her from seeing the rest of the island, so she turns her attention to the lake. It seems infinite, the boundaries of it’s blue-grey water hidden by mist. She bends down and tears a strip off her already torn and bloodied black skirts, using it to tie back her tangled hair. It is a cruel mockery of the elaborate hairdos Gwen had once aided her with, adorning her with jeweled pins and fond touches.

Morgana shakes that thought off, refocusing on the lake. She steels herself; one final look at what she can see of Avalon behind her, then she is running to the water’s edge. She jumps into the lake gracefully, long ago swimming lessons aiding her muscles as she strikes out for a shore she cannot see. It is no doubt protected by powerful magics, but if anyone can bend the world to her will, it is a furious Morgana.

The water is cold, helping to clear her mist-filled mind. Even as she cuts through the water, kicking hard enough to make the whole lake churn, the water is refreshing. Cleansing. Healing, she realizes as her aches dull away to nothing. The waters of Avalon are healing her, taking away the layers of sweat and grime and blood that have become her constant companions. She could just float here, let the water take her worries away….

She had been swimming, hadn’t she? She had somewhere to be. She is very important; Morgana le Fay, priestess of the Goddess of the Old Religion, unmatched Seer, and the Keeper of Sacred Magics. People were afraid of her. This is strange, because she’s not hurting anyone. Right now, she’s just floating in a lake. Just floating, arms and legs spread wide the way you learn to do as a child so you can stare up at the sky and not sink. The clouds above are a misty blue-grey, like the lake but lighter. She stares up at the sky as she floats in the lake. There’s the sudden urge to laugh, and Morgana can’t remember the last time she’d laughed just because she wanted to. She laughs, floating in the lake.

She had something to do, didn’t she? She kept getting distracted. This lake was very distracting. Why was she in this lake again? She had died, or something like it….she was trying to get to the other shore, wasn’t she? The other shore where the living people were. What else was on the other shore? What else was beyond the mists? Morgana begins swimming again, focusing on the rhythm of her arms and legs. Left, right, kick, kick. She cannot get distracted again. She’ll figure out why she’s going where she’s going when she gets there. It must be important. 

She has not yet reached the barrier of mist. Somewhere behind her lies Avalon, isle of magics. Morgana was of magic, she knew that. She knew others of magic, didn’t she? Like….Gwen? No. Gwen was a very long time ago, and the fire in her eyes was all her own, born not of magic but of fierce unrelenting love. That was a long time ago, before either of them wore crowns...Gwen was Queen to a King that had once been a brother….someone in this mess was magical. Morgana is still swimming, the mist that must hide the opposite shore still far off in the distance. This effort will be worth it though, for the opposite shore will be right on the other side. It will be worth it to see the child...MORDRED! A strange sort of glee runs through her at remembering a small magical boy, before she remembers that he is a boy no longer. 

Mordred is a wizard of considerable power, destined to kill a king at Morgana’s command. Morgana had lead armies, yes, she remembers this now. She wanted to correct all the cruelty in the world because Camelot, Camelot had never cared. This is why she is swimming. She has a mission. She moves faster, organizing events in her mind. There had been crystals and a cave and Camlann, and….MERLIN. That sneak, that snake, not a speck of the friend he’d once been in his eyes as he stabbed her. Killed her.

She was dead. She’d died. That stupid sword had been the only thing that could kill her and Merlin had done it. Traitor to his own kind, traitor to his friends, traitor to her. When she returned, she’d make sure he never saw the light of day again; kill him slowly and painfully and strip him of his magic that the fool never used for anything worthwhile. 

Morgana’s magic must have delivered her to this place, kept something of her soul intact even as her body was murdered. Well, her magic would just have to deliver her right back out of Avalon. She swims like a woman possessed, keeping her mind focused on her goals. She does not know how long she has been....incapacitated. She does not know the state of the battle. Once she is on dry land and away from this infernal water, this perpetual mist, she will See the battle. She will lead her troops, she will order Mordred to...no, she’ll take care of her halfwit half-brother herself.

Morgana was meant to be Queen. Who else has bled like her? Been betrayed like her? Been abandoned like her? She was owed this use of her power, owed a reason for her suffering, owed using her magic to get a crown and ensure that everyone who was ever told they were a monster learned differently. Avalon is only a setback, and a minor one at that. Even if the mist seems to creep ever further away, taking the promise of an opposite shore with it. Even if the mist is behaving as if Morgana hasn’t moved since she began swimming. Swimming in Avalon’s cold waters...FOCUS.

She would destroy every speck of Pendragon red in that castle. Replace it with something else, anything else. Anything that didn’t reek of blood and fire and pain. Purple, perhaps. For royalty, and the dress Gwen had worn and covered in stitched flowers matching the ones she’d brought Morgana in the mornings. Morgana had loved her elaborate dresses of silk and satin, worth their weight in gold, but secretly, she would have given quite a lot for those simple flowers and the smiles that came with them. All she’d worn in recent days was black, black, and more black with the occasional blood stains for variety. Black like her hair and her soul and her magic. But her magic is not black, is it? It is gold, gold, gold. She’d been...good, hadn’t she?

She floats in the lake again. The water is soothing, but her mind is aching. More memories surface, recent ones of battles and plots for vengeance, older ones of secret smiles shared between children who thought they were adults. They’d wanted to change the world, hadn’t they? They’d just….never quite agreed on how to do it. War wasn’t needed, but no one had listened to her. No one had understood that sometimes you have to make hard choices, that you have to go after what you want unapologetically. Morgana wanted the crown not only for herself, but for everyone who had been hurt like her. Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten about that.

She starts swimming again. She doesn’t quite know what she’ll do when she reaches shore. She cannot forget the hate so many hold for her, in some cases rightfully. She’s killed, and does not regret most of those murders. She’d done them in the service of her mission, of her crown. It was her right. Her right to rule. 

Killing magic hurt. It took something from you. Carved out some vital piece of your soul each time you practiced it. Morgause….she had lost that piece of her soul long before she’d met Morgana. She should have realized this earlier, before she had followed her sister down the same path, dragging Mordred with her. They are slowly succumbing to the same pain, the same silent process of being eaten alive as payment for the magic they’ve used to end lives. This is the pain that had haunted her every moment before Avalon.

The pain will be worth it, Morgana decides. She will bear this pain for her power. Her subjects will see her, know what it costs her to wear the crown and protect them. They will respect her, fear her, who cares which. 

She will be the Queen of Camelot, of Albion, only spoken of in tones of reverence. Sorceress, Seer, Priestess, Queen. She will be  _ everything _ .

The mist has not gotten any closer. Her arms and legs do not ache as they should after swimming so long. Neither is she cold. The water is cold, she knows this. Yet she cannot feel it. She looks behind her...the isle of Avalon is so far away it has shrunk to a pin’s head. Yet she is no closer to the curtain of mist that must hide the opposite shore. The world that cast her aside in life has now done so again in death. Avalon does not want to let her go.

Still, she swims. The magics of Avalon can only be broken at the barriers, so she must make it to the barrier. Surrender is only a strange stack of syllables to her, not a tangible concept. She lived, she was unwanted, her time is meant to be over. But she refuses to have her story end here. She will not put down her pen. 

She must be closer to the shore than the isle. If she can just make it to shore….a memory wells up in her eyes, overwhelming her with it’s sweetness. Swimming in a lake with Gwen and Arthur. Children, the lot of them. Young and chubby-cheeked, racing and daring each other without being preoccupied by propriety. Racing towards a distant bank with the winner promised a shiny stone they’d found. Morgana and Arthur had almost immediately begun tussling with each other, figuring that they each only had one real opponent. They’d forgotten about Gwen, who’d held her breath and swam underwater, resurfacing only to climb onto the riverbank. She’d won because no one had taken her seriously. What a mistake. You only did that once, with Gwen.

Morgana wondered if Arthur was dead like her. It was probably the best solution. If one of them was alive, the other would eternally try to fight them. Best for them both to be dead.

She is still swimming, mostly because humans, women especially and Morgana in particular are stubborn creatures. She is dead, yet she wants to be alive. Why? The only good reason she can think of is child-Gwen’s smile when she’d won the swimming race. Morgana wonders if she wears that smile while she wears the crown. She’d always thought that Gwen married the wrong Pendragon. 

Her toes brush against something. She rears back instinctively, only to realize that it is solid. She is touching the lake bottom. She can feel the bottom of the lake. It is sandy and sloping and utterly magnificent, because she has done it. The mist lies in front of her eyes, and she has made it to the other shore. She walks forward, runs forward, magic pouring out of her both to break down the barriers and just for the pure joy of being alive-

She is in Avalon, and waves crash on the rocky shore.

She repeats the journey many more times. Each time, she reaches the mists after a short eternity only to be placed back on the shore of Avalon. 

Sometimes, all she wants is to crawl from the misty waters and lay at Queen Guinevere’s feet, to beg for mercy for all her crimes and cruelty and treachery. 

Sometimes, she wants to tear Camelot apart brick by brick, raze it to the ground, then spit in the ashes and burn those too while wearing a golden crown. 

Most of the time though, she just wants to see someone again. Anyone. Maybe not anyone. She wants what she wanted in life, to be loved and accepted. To prevent anyone from feeling how she did through her childhood, how she feels now. That was what had led her to save Mordred, so long ago. A very long time ago. 

Everything was so long ago. When she had a brother, a best friend lovelier than the dawn sky, dresses worth more than farms and an uncompromising love for everyone who needed her help. So much has happened between then and now. She has changed, forever walking away from the girl she’d been. She wonders how much was her fault and how much was inescapable…

More eternities pass. She is still there, waiting in Avalon. After a time, she decides that it is probably for the best. The world is not for her. She is shunned and feared and made to fear herself, and for what? A king’s ego? A mad dragon’s made-up destiny? When had there ever been a story that ended well for her? Women like her never ended up happy. Too ambitious, too prideful, too  _ angry. _ No, the world is not for her, or perhaps she is not for the world. Her thoughts swirl like mist on Avalon’s waters, one into the next into the next. 

She waits in Avalon. She had many titles in her life, but she liked her name best. Her titles had always been said with possession or false pride, mockery or scorn, hate or fear.  _ Lady. King’s Ward. Sorceress. High Priestess. Seer. Queen. Traitor. _ Her name had been said far less frequently, but nearly always in love and friendship by the few she actually cared about. First her mother, then her didn’t-know-they-were-related-at-the-time brother, then Gwen and Gauis. Much later Merlin and Morgause had come along, and they should have been closest to the woman she was, but both had betrayed her in the end. There had been love in the beginning though. There had always been love in the beginning, before it faded into hate and fear.

Only one person had never truly hated her.  _ Gwen _ . Her best friend, her only true ally, her lady love if you wanted to be romantic about it. A maidservant, now the Queen of Camelot, left behind with everything else the woman who Morgana had been had ever desired. 

Morgana stares out onto the misty lake. It is quiet in Avalon, but not hauntingly so. Waves crash gently against the shore, wind blows through her hair. A bird chirps somewhere behind her, but she does not look at the rest of the isle yet. She knows, remembering violent watery struggles from eternities ago, that the island will not let her go. But right now, the water is blue-gray, the mist swirls, and she thinks this is all she needs. In another time, another eternity, she can see what the island holds for her. For now, it will be just the mist and her memories. 

Her life was strange, she decides. She toes off her shoes, dipping her feet into the cold water. She rests in her elbows, sand and small rocks cushioning her back. The sky is a lighter blue-gray than the lake, yet not as gray as the mist. She never could have been anything other than what she had been, could she? Under the circumstances, she really couldn't have. Who had ever shown her true affection? Who had ever told her she was not a monster? What had ever been hers? How could she ever be content in a life where everything she ever wanted to be was shunned and scorned and hated? And that’s not even mentioning her magical talents. No, she was hated enough just for being an ambitious woman. 

No one was concerned with women in that world unless they were maidens or martyrs. Forget about maids being respected if High Priestesses weren’t even acknowledged to exist. Oh, but what a Queen she would have made. Oh, what a Queen Gwen will make. How lonely she will be. No one would understand her either; all the evil she’d witnessed and the people she’d lost and the perfection she would be expected to be. She would have no one to confide in. 

Morgana thought it a large oversight that there could only ever be one Queen at a time. Men were not very good at handling problems, but the crown was not something that should be taken alone. Look at Morgana. All alone, of course she fell. Of course she failed. Of course her story is now in an indefinite intermission.

She had needed help. This time around, she had not received it. Perhaps in another lifetime she will be properly loved, when her Goddess sees fit to release her from Avalon. When Morgana can finally turn her eyes away from the water. She does not want to let go yet. Her pain had defined her, gave her a purpose. Who is she without her pain? Who is she without her history? 

On the isle of Avalon, there is nothing to worry about. There is nothing to do.  _ Absolutely _ nothing to do; her current idleness did not stem from an inability to take action , but from the fact that she had nothing to worry about anymore. Her battle was done for now. So why can she not tear her eyes from the water? Why is she trying to convince herself that if she swims out there just one more time, things will be different? 

Here, she is safe. Out there, everything is uncertain. Eternities have passed, surely everyone she cared about is gone now. Perhaps they are here as well, similarly staring out onto the water and refusing to let go of their histories. Her story. 

Avalon is a place of waiting, of stasis, of healing. Perhaps of leaving things behind. There is nothing to do now but wait. She can turn her eyes away from the mists, her mind away from her story, and prepare for when she will re-emerge into life. But then who will remember her? Who will know how she was and what she wanted? Who will speak her name with kindness instead of contempt and make sure she lives on?

(It’ll have to be you, dear reader. You’re who’s left behind when the characters walk away. When Morgana finally does take her eyes off the mist and goes to explore what the isle of magic holds for her in this inbetween.)

Morgana considers what she can do. She can continue her endless swimming, starting again and again and again, hoping that eventually she will break through or truly die or find some other ending to this. Or…..she can get up, continue her story. She doesn't want it to end yet. She wants to find happiness in her life, however strange it may be. 

She can remember and move on. She can hold her story inside her and also find out what Avalon has in store. She can grow, she can change, and she can remain herself. She will mourn, she will be angry, she will crave justice, and she will carry that with her into whatever comes next. 

But for now, she waits in Avalon. 

**Author's Note:**

> Morgana always struck me as getting a very raw deal. She is a character who is extremely ambitious and powerful, but because of the world she lives in and the people she's surrounded by, she is cut off and stifled at every turn. I don't blame her for getting frustrated and angry. She was scared and in pain all the time, looking for someone to reach out to but no one would help.  
> I wanted her to realize some of this. To realize that yes, it was unfair. What happened to her should not have happened. But she cannot change the past, she can only move forward, even if she's scared of healing. 
> 
> As always, I'm on Tumblr @hairasuntouchedaspartoftheamazon , and I don't own these characters seeing as how they're thousands of years old. They're public domain at this point, I'm not sure why the Merlin fandom still uses disclaimers, I think we're good.
> 
> And hey! Stay safe! Stay sane! Stay inside if you can! If you can't, I'm sorry and hope you have some protective stuff. Wash your hands! You'll get through this!


End file.
